Meet Your Problems

Two days before Dwight Eisenhower was lifted into the ambulance at the White House south portico, the President and his lady descended the portico's graceful staircase to greet 200 "students" in a Young Republican leadership-training school. Head bare under a hot sun, Ike welcomed his youthful guests, admonished them to search for truth and apply it, reminded them that political parties must be dedicated not to seizure of power but to ideals.

Digressing, the President offered a pinch of personal philosophy: "If you will meet your problems as they come up and get the satisfaction of a job well done--play hard--have fun doing it--[then] I think you will have a lot of fun every single day." In a week that was average for presidential pressures, Ike was following his own seasoned advice. Commencing early, he worked hard, sometimes kept working into the evening. But he balanced the unrelenting pressure by seizing a President's scattered opportunities to relax.

Over His Head. The week began with a call on new neighbors across Lafayette Square from the White House: the A.F.L.-C.I.O. high command, dedicating an eight-story headquarters at 815 Sixteenth Street. The next day Ike wrote a godspeed message to departing Indonesian President Sukarno, hoped Sukarno "found what you sought in America as a state of mind and as the center of an idea." That afternoon he squeezed in 18 holes of golf at Burning Tree Country Club, that evening joined ten congressional leaders around the Cabinet table for a solemn 80-minute discussion on the foreign-aid bill (see below).

Next morning, spruce in a grey summer suit, Ike held his weekly press conference. Toward the end of his opening seven-minute talk on the need for foreign aid, he got in over his head in trying to phrase the Administration's new warmth toward neutrals. Some nations that "are using the term 'neutral' with respect to attachment to military alliances," do not mean to claim neutrality between right and wrong. After all, he said, the U.S. constantly asserted its neutrality in the first 150 years of its history. If a neutral nation is attacked, he went on, world public opinion will be more favorably disposed toward it than if it had "announced its military association with another great power."

Up from Under. Here was a disconcerting misstatement of U.S. history. It was also such a blurred statement of U.S. foreign policy that the White House next day formally explained to perplexed members of U.S.-sponsored alliances that Ike's "military association" remark referred to association with Communist nations, and that the President certainly still believed in collective security. Then, at week's end, Secretary of State Dulles tried to repair the damage in a speech at Ames, Iowa (see below).

Once past this hump, Ike turned the conference over to the 212 newsmen attending, fielded 28 questions in 27 minutes on such newsworthy topics as the political campaigns, the Twining visit to Russia, the status of Administration measures to boost postal rates and assist schools, even his feelings on a stadium proposed for the District of Columbia (he favored it). A reporter laid tongue to cheek, allowed that "some leading Democrats have suggested that prior to the campaign and the election both candidates be examined by the same panel of maybe three doctors." When the laughter died. Ike offered a grim and ironic reply: "If there is anything wrong with me, I would like to know it."

Time to Swim. That afternoon, after greeting the Young Republicans, the President hopped into his two-engine Aero Commander, was flown to Gettysburg for

a 2 1/2 hour conference on his farm with Allan Ryan and Lee Leachman, Aberdeen Angus experts from Rhinebeck, N.Y. He flew back to the capital, arrived next morning at his desk at three minutes before eight, put in a long day's work broken only for lunch and a 15-minute dip in the White House pool.

Among his callers was Secretary of State Dulles, arriving to fill Ike in on the newest Bulganin letter. (It boasted about the proposed 1,200,000 Soviet troop cut, ignored the President's proposal for a worldwide freeze on nuclear stockpiles.) Former Senator Harry P. Cain arrived for a 30-minute appointment in which to air complaints about the Administration's security program. Cain emerged after 45 minutes, told newsmen he felt "more hopeful." At 5:15 that evening Ike stopped work. An hour and 40 minutes later, in white dinner jacket, he was whisked to the Sheraton-Park Hotel for the News Photographers' dinner.

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